American Morals?

Listening to the news today, I wonder why I listen. As I type this I know that sounds kind of crazy, but it seems the only news is bad news. Would it hurt to report some kind of good news?

Locally, in Phoenix, AZ a father of a 3 month old decided to go into his place of business yesterday, a bar and leave his 3-month old son in the car for a few minutes. The outside temp. was at least 100F, so the car temp. was unimaginable, and the few minutes turned into an hour. When the story originated the father said he went in to handle “business” and lost track of time. I was skeptical. Now the truth has come out and the father was smoking pot and has been arrested and is in jail. He will have to live with the aftermath the rest of his life. I don’t necessarily want to judge the man, but more the society that has created a man that thought it was okay to stop off to smoke pot since it’s now “legal”, but leave his baby in the car. Actions have consequences and when rules and laws are changed to make everyone happy, it’s so easy to bend them a little more, like leaving a baby in the car for a “few” minutes while getting high, and losing track of time……at the baby’s peril. The thought that making marijuana legal was that it was a victimless crime, tell that to the dead baby.

An 8 yr. old boy and his 6 yr. old sister decided to take the family car to go joy riding after having been put to bed. When the mother woke up, found them and the car missing she alerted the police who put out a BOLO and police who noticed the car driving erratically, put on their red lights and tried to pull the car over. It’s not apparent if the 8 yr. old boy who was driving panicked, but he crashed the car killing his sister, suffering only superficial injuries himself. Only his airbag deployed. This little boy will have to suffer the guilt from a childish decision for the rest of his life. I don’t think anyone is to blame here, I think it’s just children being children, foolishly of course, but I wonder in my cynical way, if someone will need to be held accountable for the girl’s death to make everyone feel better. Will there be lawsuits because her airbag didn’t deploy? Will the police be sued, if it’s possible, for scaring the boy into having the fatal accident?

On the lighter side, Billy Ray Cyrus tells Miley Cyrus that if twerking had been invented in his day, he would have been doing it. If that thought doesn’t make you want to scrub your minds eye….I don’t know what will! Instead of saying what the rest of us were thinking and saying that Miley went a little too far in her unabashed pursuit of fame and outrageousness, he condones it! Huh! Too bad the creator of the foam finger, Steve Chemlar is horrified with Miley saying “I would say that it certainly misrepresented its intent to encourage team support – She took an honorable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it.”

As the country was abuzz with Miley’s antics at the VMAs twerking and tongue wagging a Montana court District Judge G. Todd Baugh said a 14-year-old rape victim was “older than her chronological age” and has defended the 30-day sentence given to former teacher Stacey Rambold as appropriate because he was considered a low risk to re-offend. Rambold was charged in October 2008 with three counts of sexual intercourse without consent after authorities alleged he had an ongoing sexual relationship with Cherice Moralez, starting the previous year when she was 14. Moralez killed herself in 2010 at age 16 while the case was pending. I haven’t heard as much outrage about this case as I did about Miley Cyrus’s performance.

Perhaps we need to realign our moral compass in this country. Just a thought. While we’re so caught up with celebrity status and outrageousness, our pillars of society are making decisions like this. Perhaps partly because we have accepted this erosion and degradation of what’s accepted as the norm by society.

What do you think?

© Evelyn Garone 8.30.13